My Tales of the Tanning Place

Today was a great day! It started with my mom and I meeting my nurse practitioner for lunch. No reason, just because. We enjoyed about an hour long lunch, just chatting! It was really great.

Mom and I had more errands to run, but first: off to the tanning booth. I've never been artificially tanning and I'm not really for it, but we were going to get those Mystic spray tans. Fine. I wasn't thrilled, but we're going to the beach on this Massachusetts vacation and we're both ghastly white. We get there, pay for our sessions, and Mom goes first while I watch their "How-to" video. While waiting, out of the tanning room walks my friend Betsy! She watched the video with me (as we joked about how difficult it looked) and soon I was ready to go... or so I thought. The best advice I got from others: HOLD YOUR BREATH! "Crap..." I think to myself. I can barely hold my breath 10 seconds. This thing will not be good.

I finally get to the room and one of the workers puts in my spray tan bottle and starts up the machine. "Welcome. Please insert your tanning spray and run your hand over the sensor." She didn't run her hand over the sensor, so I did it for her after she left. OOPS!!!! That's how you start it! I haven't undressed, done my hair up, taken off my jewelry, put on the lotion, or anything!!! I run to the other side of the machine and press a red button. "Purge starting." I have no idea what that means, but I'm panicking. I run out of the room.... "Umm.. I started it. And I'm not ready. Then I pressed a button." Epic. Fail.

I had to wait a while for them to reset the machine, throw away that bottle of spray tan stuff, and put in a new one. *siiiigh*. Boy did I feel stupid.

I was ready like 10 minutes later (or so it seemed) and stepped into the machine, clothes-less, hair in a net, lotion on my hands and feet, and those weird eye things for tanning beds on my eyes. NOW I run my hand over the sensor (at the right time). If you haven't seen one of these things, they look a lot shower stalls. I get in, close the door, and wait to be sprayed. GROSS.... soon the stall filled with the mist and every breath tasted bitter and was sharp. I was taking small breaths and soon felt winded and light-headed. I was very glad to get out of there! It only took a few minutes, but man... that was rough!

Now, the key was to not get wet for the next 4-7 hours. It's a beautiful sunny Southern day, I'm sure I'll be fine. What we didn't think about was the HEAT and how we started sweating. Not good! I think we avoided streaking though, thankfully.

I think I'm tanner. I think. My feet, the bottoms of them, are ORANGE! It's kinda funny. Check it out:

Haha! Shows off my arch nicely.

-Annie